Box of Pandora

Greeting:
Hey everyone, i'd like to start that i really enjoy finding glitches and unconventional solutions. I've notice that 'Shield of the Five' has no extended usage beside building it in to 'Plated Graves'. And there is also no use of 'Icon of Goddess' if you're not aiming to get 'Sacrifice Stone'. So this will be my attempt to fill this gap.

Explanation of main problems:Since i have a feeling that this item might be misunderstood very quickly i'll let myself explain it's usage right now.I really enjoy the idea of having a range stun for an agility hero or strength and Stormspirit is mostly use by intelligence heroes, which is great but still doesn't stop enemies from blinking away. Also even if i was to make such an item with 'Shield of Five' and 'Sacrifice Stone' it would be a common sense to add an additional effect; i came out with something very useful that can help with teams lacking synchronization. We already have items that help with destroying:

Enemy movement speed (Frost and Burn, Frostwolf's skull)

Enemy attack speed (Frostfield Plate)

Enemy magic armor (Spellshards)

Enemy quantity (Puzzlebox, Whispering Helm)

And so on....

But beside Wards that help in map control, Portal Key's that increase the chance of landing a properly timed initiation, and all the items and spells that make the enemy unable to fight back, sometimes we have all of that but team lacks synchronization between landing all the spells to keep the enemy pin up for as long as possible. That's where i'd like to implement the mechanic of stacking up disables just as Armadon's spikes.

I was thinking a lot what to do to make it both useful and not over powered. At the same time making it equally desired in team fights as well as not cheap in usage. That's why i decided to bind the expense of using it to enemy heroes count on map, aside to implementing a single targeted stun on hero, which makes it unable to cast outside of team fight. Beside that i also toke notice of different kind of disables, from Root, Hold, Stun, Disarm, Dismorf, Perplex, Silence and Disarm.

Box of Pandora
Upon targeting enemy heroapplies 'Doom' on a single target and triggering a global debuff 'Chain Reaction' on all enemies.

DoomTarget: Enemy Hero
Type: Magic
Range: 1100
Stuns target for 1.5s
Perplexes target for 1.5s(since the Chain Reaction put's priority of Stun above Perplexed, this will mean that 1st the enemy will be Stunned and afterwards he'll be Perplexed.)+50% of gap in armor between item owner and the targeted enemy.(as example Item Owner has 5 armor, Focused Enemy has 15 armor, this means that Item Owner has 10 armor until he auto attacks the target. If enemy has 5 armor and Item Owner has 15, that means that now he has 20 armor)

Doom Effect's
Stunned
Perplexed

Chain ReactionTarget: Global (cast doesn't give anything beside helping to keep the enemy under a chain of stuns so i made it global)
Type: Magic
Duration: 7s +3s (+3s to duration of spell after each Root/Hold/Stun/Disarm/Dismorf/Perplex/Silence/Disarm)
Cooldown: 20s + 4s (4s for each enemy hero currently alive on map)Health cost: 50 + 4% Max Health (2% for each enemy hero currently alive on map, it is a none-lethal health removal not effected by magic or physical armor) Mana cost: 75 + 5% Max Mana (3% for each enemy hero currently alive on map)

Chain Reaction Effect'sStack's up Root/Hold/Stun/Disarm/Dismorf/Perplex/Silence/Disarm so that their effect accrues at the end of previous one.
With the priority:
1. Hold (will not stack with itself, it would be silly to see polly and electrician both bind one one target waiting till the other one expires)
2. Root
2. Stun
3. Dismorf
4. Perplex/Silence/Disarm (The effect of Dismorf that also increases received damage and the effect of Root which deals damage will appear despite the priority of stack. Perplex, Silence and Disarm will appear at the same time.)

Receipt

Sacrifice Stone 3200g + Shield of the Five 803 = Box of Pandora 4003g

Changes:-Reduced Casting Speed from 100% to 50% on friend's request.
-Changes Casting Speed to 22
-Changed 400 hleath and mana to 250 health and mana while adding 10 STR and 10 INT-Made the +3s to duration appear on every enemy hero
-Changed the armor property to increase base on focused enemy
-Changed penalty for usage
-Added a description to Hold priority not stacking with it self

Usage:This item can be useful as a supportive to initiation since it helps start a gank and survive it. It provides Casting Speed, bigger health and mana pool, with increased armor based on focused enemy. Perfect for KotF using Brutalizer or WS bursting out all his spells at once, same as Behemoth trying to encourage the team to actually react on his initiation.

You asked me to look into your item suggest and so I did. It's a little tough to read and VERY difficult to understand but, if I'm reading this right (and I like to think I am) then you are suggesting an item which effectively lets you PERMANENTLY DISABLE YOUR OPPONENT and is MORE POWERFUL when you line up disables?

Ok, after rereading your OP for about the 5th time I think I misunderstood. The concept of the item is to make it so that disables that are cast during the duration of another disable are DELAYED to the end of the FIRST disables duration (effectively allowing teammates to simply cast all their disables all at the same time). Problem with that, what if I do something like say, cast Hammerstorm's stun and Pyro's Dragonfire on the same target at the same time? This means that BOTH those stuns are Cooling down at the same time while my opponent suffers from the full duration of BOTH disables.
Allow me to clarify; both spells are cast at the EXACT same time (for ease of calculation purposes we assume the both LAND at the same time as well ignoring travel times and cast times and whatnot).
DragonFire has a 10 second CD that begins as soon as the cast is complete. Hammer Throw has a 14 second CD that begins as soon as he throws the hammer. My opponent will be disabled for 3.6 seconds (the added total of the disables) while both of these spells CD. Part of a major balance point of disables is their CD and this item ignores this point and would allow better players to permanently disable heroes without ANY ability for that player to retaliate. Not fair and not balance-able.

Yes that's exactly what it does. Stacking up time the enemy is disabled.

Defensive usage:
It's a specific item to counter easily escaping teams such as: Midas, Wretched Hag, Magebane, Night Hound, Bubbles (i'm not trying to make a reasonable set of heroes, just making an example). Sometimes all it takes to be overrun by the enemy is a team that can't time up their reaction to a sudden enemy initiation. I understand that the concept of such item even existing can be controversial but with proper nerfing i don't think it would be impossible to implement. As of now there aren't any items or spells that can prevent enemy with such high mobility rushing on beside wards and vindicator's/dark ladie's ultimate.

Offensive usage:
Just like in your example, using it for gank purpose it helps to pin down a highly mobile enemy. But getting 'Box of Pandora' without that need of chaining up disables pretty much doesn't provide more then a range stun with perplex, aside to some survivability bust, for a very high price whenever used. The key to mastering usage of this item lays in team game play.

Heroes using this item:
This item could be useful for any hero that EITHER doesn't have a range stun and could use one, aside to survivability like: (INT) Vindicator, Martyr, Plag Rider, Artesia (STR) Armadon, Flux, War Beast, Accursed, Balphagore (AGI) Tremble, Sand Wrath, Corrupted Disciple, Slither.
OR have the need of encouraging a team to fight with them but they fear to jump in, scared that their spells or items can't provide enough burst damage or disable time for them to survive the encounter, such as: (INT) Black Smith, Pollywog Priest, Witch Slayer, Chipper, Aluna, Voodoo Jester, Parasite, Geomancer, Succubus (STR) Behemoth, Legionair, Pandemonium, Rampage, Midas, Gladiator, Pestilence, Gauntlet, Deadwood (AGI) Scout, Enginer, Monkey King, Dampeer, Fayde.

Possible Nerfing solutions:
As of now the costs of usage is purely increasing for the amount of enemy heroes on the map being alive, which means that in a bit team fight You'll have to sacrifice 75 + 25% of your max mana, 50 + 20% of your max health and getting a 40s cooldown on the item, for a mere 7s of duration on each enemy hero. The duration is increase only on a target that will receive any form of disables during that time.
Also it can't be cast unless in 1100 range of enemy hero to cast over. So You see that the cost is high on each stage of the game, that is why only a good team player a typical leader would usually pick this item. It's not as cheap as codex for a solo player but rather a Frostfrield Plate that buffs friendly heroes.

I was thinking of making it work only on a single hero but then the item would never be bought since it's a waste of money, unless i'd focus more on the range stun but even then it would need an additional effect, either way i'm eager to consider it receiving a proper feed back from community. Was also thinking to make it an aoe spell which would be cool, not sure exactly why i didn't go that path, maybe because i wanted to make a 1st global effect item?
I was also thinking about using the Sacrificial Stone property of giving a buff after dying, for example the item could give a range stun, perplex with slow when the hero is alive, and an aoe Chain Reaction for everyone within range of killed hero, but that still wouldn't be right as having seen your team mate die, doesn't encourage anyone to go and fight the crowd of enemies above his corps even with Chain Reaction. Anyway i'd love to see Your suggestions people, because i think that Chain Reaction is a good and new property very useful in teams that lack proper timing, and suck in ganks or counter initiations. Also it would be a great way to use those two items that lack other item to be build in to.

Last edited by BeetlePunk; 04-24-2012 at 03:05 PM.
Reason: It's not as cheap as codex for a solo player but rather a Frostfrield Plate that buffs friendly heroes.

Heroes i find in horrible need of balance tweaks to find themselves in current meta:
[3.6] Vindicator, Wildsoul, Ophelia, Silhouette, Electrician, Keeper of the Forest

Ok you posted but you didn't understand why I said it's not balanceable. It doesn't matter if I have 1 HP or 1000 HP cost. Let me give you an example of a setup that would be stupid OP with this.

with the following items:
Sheepstick
Stormspirit
Box of Pandora

this alone would allow to PERMANENTLY DISABLE A TARGET ON HIS OWN AS LONG AS ENOUGH HEROES ARE ALIVE. As it is a with a sheepstick can keep a single target disable for something like, 9 consecutive seconds if he lands them all right. With your item he could blow ALL those skills without having to wait to line up the disables allowing them to Cooldown while his opponent suffers from ALL of those disables. This means he can use them AGAIN EARLIER. During the majority of these disables he can just sit there auto-attacking his target while he gets in position to block them if he so chooses. Since he can use these skills again earlier, this means he can KEEP CHAINING HIS OWN DISABLES TOGETHER TO PERMANENTLY DISABLE A TARGET. This is UNACCEPTABLE. You need to consider other items and possible ways people can break your concept when you think of an item not just throw random crap out there.

The idea is original, and not entirely without merit but it is not balanced and would not really be balance-able.

Let me try and analyze what's the problem. We'll assume we actually have a Witch Slayer that has the money to get Sheepstick, Stormspirit and Box of pandora. It would cost him about, let's say Sheepstick 5675g, Stormspirit 3200g, Box of Pandora 4003 which would give You the amount of 12878g. And each time he'd want to use all of his disables to chain dominate a single enemy it would cost him Sheepstick 100 mana, Stormspirit 75, Box of Pandora 75 + 25% max mana with 50 health + 20% max hp, Minaturization 200 mana, Graveyard 170, so in the end it would cost him about 620 mana + 25% from 2460 mana pool at lvl 25 with those items = 1235 which is exactly the amount of 51.46% of max mana pool, let's not forget about the health cost which is 50 + 20% max hp = 494hp.

My judgment that even if Witch Slayer had the money for those items and would agree to spend half of his mana pool only on dissables and not his ulti which would make him useless after doing such combo, force to go back to the well every time he did it. I think that it would be as balanced as having any other hero having that amount of farm and trying to claim a kill and not been called over powered. So in the end it's a little bad example of proving the item being inappropriate in HoN.

It helps synchronizing team fights, and encourage team to actually participate in ganks not afraid that they will be one shot soon after clumsily landing a badly timed disable.

Last edited by BeetlePunk; 04-25-2012 at 02:02 PM.

Heroes i find in horrible need of balance tweaks to find themselves in current meta:
[3.6] Vindicator, Wildsoul, Ophelia, Silhouette, Electrician, Keeper of the Forest

Let me try and analyze what's the problem. We'll assume we actually have a Witch Slayer that has the money to get Sheepstick, Stormspirit and Box of pandora. It would cost him about, let's say Sheepstick 5675g, Stormspirit 3200g, Box of Pandora 4003 which would give You the amount of 12878g. And each time he'd want to use all of his disables to chain dominate a single enemy it would cost him Sheepstick 100 mana, Stormspirit 75, Box of Pandora 75 + 25% max mana with 50 health + 20% max hp, Minaturization 200 mana, Graveyard 170, so in the end it would cost him about 620 mana + 25% from 2460 mana pool at lvl 25 with those items = 1235 which is exactly the amount of 51.46% of max mana pool, let's not forget about the health cost which is 50 + 20% max hp = 494hp.

My judgment that even if Witch Slayer had the money for those items and would agree to spend half of his mana pool only on dissables and not his ulti which would make him useless after doing such combo, force to go back to the well every time he did it. I think that it would be as balanced as having any other hero having that amount of farm and trying to claim a kill and not been called over powered. So in the end it's a little bad example of proving the item being inappropriate in HoN.

It helps synchronizing team fights, and encourage team to actually participate in ganks not afraid that they will be one shot soon after clumsily landing a badly timed disable.

You realize that with a sheepstick and a stormspirit he'll have 20+ mana regen right? he doesn't CARE how much mana he spends he'll have it all back by the time he needs to cast something again.

Well I would wait around ESPECIALLY since his mana drain takes 400 mana...man your item is a good idea but its broken...enough said if this item was in the game no one would carry they would just go as many single target stunning people they possibly could and rush box of pandora

I have to agree with GroM...whilst the idea is unique and interesting, it's inherently flawed. Something that should also be considered - team co-ordination, timing, joining in team fights and ganks, etc, is a major part of this game and the skill required to play it. It's annoying as hell when you solo queue and you get a team with no co-ordination, and sure, this item would fix that. But consider what it would do for the people playing with friends/voice chat/clans or just have good teamplay. They would be able to unload all their disables practically at the same time, and could potentially shut down an entire freaking team for 10s+. That, and as already said, their spells would all cooldown much sooner than if they had individually saved them for the right moment.

Imagine a Tempest/WS/Magmus/Pyro/FA lineup. Tempest blinks in, ultis, grabs the entire enemy team. WS, Magmus, Pyro and FA all throw their stuns straight away on top of the entire team. That's nearly what, 8s of extra guaranteed disable on top of Tempests ult on the entire enemy team? And all that time, they can just nuke/auto attack to their hearts content? Not to mention most of their stuns would be coming off cooldown a matter of seconds after the enemy team finally gets out of disable (assuming by some miracle they aren't dead). Now I know this is a partially extreme scenario, but even if Tempest only grabbed 3 of the enemy team (fairly common with a good Tempest), then that's still 3/5 almost guaranteed kills in a teamfight with the only retaliation coming from 2 of the enemy team.

I see. Perhaps You're right here. I still think that chan reaction is a great new mechanic which would help teams with poor timing. But You're right this item could be abuse by pro gamers. This topic can be put down.

Last edited by BeetlePunk; 05-05-2012 at 04:37 AM.
Reason: This topic can be put down.

Heroes i find in horrible need of balance tweaks to find themselves in current meta:
[3.6] Vindicator, Wildsoul, Ophelia, Silhouette, Electrician, Keeper of the Forest